WELCOME TO THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF THE LIVER

Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham is the home to Europe’s joint largest programme for liver transplantation, performing 200 procedures a year. Approximately 20% of these are for a cancer indication. In addition to Hepatocellular Carcinoma, the long-accepted cancer indication for liver transplantation, we are now developing programmes for new indications of Neuroendocrine Tumours, Colorectal Liver Metastases and Cholangiocarcinoma.

Birmingham has pioneered marginal organ utilisation and improvements in organ preservation allowing expansion of liver transplantation and its indications. We cover a quarter of UK for liver transplantation, and we are the home for the national MDT for patient selection for liver transplantation in NETs. This MDT has assessed 45 patients with successful liver transplantation having taken place in eight patients.

The Fellowship provides advanced training in Hepatology and Transplant Oncology.

• with exposure to liver transplant assessment and pathways.
• collaborations with the leading transplant clinicians from across UK and opportunities to present work at national and international liver and cancer conferences.

The academic work consists of clinical projects related to transplant oncology and basic science projects which will align with the Centre for Liver and Gastrointestinal Research (CLGR) at the University of Birmingham.  The CLGR has an international track record in studying liver immunology and liver fibrosis.  Previous fellows have undertaken highly successful projects supervised by clinicians and scientists providing excellent experience in a world leading research department.

This work leads to higher degree – MSc/MD.

Interested parties please contact the co-supervisors:

Dr Tahir Shah, Consultant Hepatologist and Head of Birmingham Transplant Oncology Programme at tahir.shah@uhb.nhs.uk 

Professor Shishir Shetty, Director of Biomedical Research Centre and Honorary Consultant Hepatologist at s.shetty@bham.ac.uk 

Previous Fellows can be contacted at Zaira.Rehman2@uhb.nhs.uk  and Rosie Faulkes Rosemary.Faulkes@uhb.nhs.uk 

The deadline for enquiries is Friday 27th June 2025.

The James Lind Alliance survey to prioritise unanswered research questions for liver cirrhosis is now open.

Whether you're a healthcare professional, patient, carer, family member, or researcher, all opinions matter.

What do you think are the priorities for liver cirrhosis research?

We are asking you to select the questions you think are important from a list of 38 possible research questions, then from your long list, choose your top 10 most important questions.

We also ask you to give some information about yourself so that we will know if the survey is reaching a wide audience and to help us target groups wherethere are a low number of responses. You can choose not to answer these questions.

The survey should only take 10 – 15 minutes.

Take the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SMMF6XJ 

Closes: May 2nd 2025

The FSRH Clinical Effectiveness Unit is currently updating their guideline on the safety of contraceptive methods (the UKMEC). The UKMEC considers safety of use of contraceptive methods by individuals with a variety of personal characteristics or medical conditions: UK Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use.

They would like to secure some input from a liver disease expert to advise their Guideline Development Group and they would be very grateful for any help BASL members can give if someone is willing to assist them. 

They are seeking a topic expert with a broad knowledge of liver disease who could advise our Guideline Development Group on the following areas:

- Cholestasis
- Viral hepatitis
- Cirrhosis
- Liver tumours

It would involve an initial meeting with their Clinical Director and systematic reviewer to consider the evidence (about an hour) in April/early May. They would also ask the topic expert to attend, if possible, part of their UKMEC Guideline Development Group meeting, which is taking place on the afternoon of Monday 9 June 2025 (for a slot of about 1 hour). They would also ask the expert to review relevant sections of draft text for the guideline subsequently, if it is agreed that revisions are needed.

Participating in this project offers an opportunity to work with leading UK and international experts on national guidance as well as those from other specialties, gain experience in guideline development and be acknowledged for your contribution in the final guideline document.

The topic expert must be a consultant clinician currently working in the specified field. The topic expert must also be in good standing with the relevant professional body and not subject to fitness to practise proceedings. Previous experience in the development of guidelines would be welcome but is not essential.

Please note the role isn’t remunerated.

They would be delighted if one of our members would be able to help.  

If you are interested in assisting please contact: ceu@fsrh.org .